January 6, 2011

Sometimes business people make things harder than they have to be, take marketing for instance. Marketing is pretty simple when you get right down to it: discover the emotional value inherent in what you sell and present it in a memorable manner that differentiates you from the competition. What can be so hard? Of course we all know the devil is in the details, and implementation is the sharp end of his pitchfork.

Those who know our work, or who have read our articles, know that we recommend video as the best strategy to achieve your major marketing objective: delivering a memorable, differentiated message highlighting the emotional value of your brand. And if you follow the trends, you know video is spreading across the Web like cream cheese on a freshly toasted bagel. Unfortunately quite a bit of that cheese comes in a bland tasting, homogenized package that makes little impression.

A while back we created a series of articles called Killer Campaigns showcasing great commercials and pointing out the methods used that made them effective. In this new series, Killer Video Techniques, we’ll show you some cutting-edge methods we use to create memorable, differentiating marketing messages.

It Starts With Words

The best place to begin is at the beginning, and everything starts with WORDS. Let’s face it we do not live in the Golden Age of Articulation. The communication era spawned by the Internet and its social media craze has created a Tower of Babble. The eloquence, clarity and emotional impact of Churchill, Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Martin Luther King have been replaced by instant messaging abbreviations, fifteen-second sound bites, and 140 character tweets, all coming at you a mile-a-minute, all talking at the same time, and for the most part empty of anything useful or relevant.

If you can’t articulate your message in some meaningful manner then you’re in trouble from the ‘get-go.’ You may think this is old-fashioned, but words DO have meaning. The blurring and confusion of what makes marketing and sales different has led to a generation of business owners and executives who cannot produce or deliver a finely crafted statement of who they are, what they do, and why customers should care.

The problem is often hidden because you can get away with a lot of blather when you’re face-to-face, but remove the physical presence and human interaction from the equation, like on your website, and you’ve got a whole new ball game. This is one of the reasons why we highly recommend a video Web Host but that’s a discussion for another time. Now we want to concentrate on words because words can deliver your marketing dreams or they can create your worst advertising nightmare.
You’re Looking at the Wrong Mentors

There are endless articles, piles of statistical analysis, and countless essays and white papers on how business should use the Web to its advantage. And like a lot of business writing it concentrates on high profile major corporations as the source of expertise and savvy business strategy. Well, let me let you in on a little secret – most of these big businesses are badly run and creatively and intellectually bankrupt. Most are running on past successes from a bygone era and consumer inertia. In the end big business is about power and money, not expertise and innovation. Are there exceptions, of course; am I being harsh, probably; but the bottom-line here is that you need to look more carefully at what really works and why, that is unless you have endless stacks of money available to bury your competition and flood the airwaves with endless repetitive drivel that seeps into viewers’ consciousness like some alien mind-altering drug.

Kinetic Typography

Now some people are thinking, when the heck is he going to get to the technique. Why doesn’t he just give me the bulleted points? Why? Because if you don’t understand why you’re doing something, you shouldn’t be doing it. And if you don’t know why things work, you won’t know how to fix them when they don’t.

People are busy, and the pace of business is fast, but if you don’t take the time to understand how and why things work then you are going to waste a lot of time and money. This applies to your clients as well. They need to be attracted and motivated enough by your video presentation to absorb your brand message. If clients don’t understand who you really are and what you really do, they will never be satisfied customers.

So here it is, Kinetic Typography an exciting, innovative video technique that combines the power of sight and sound to deliver a meaningful, memorable message based on the power of words.

The technique has its origins with motion designers who took famous movie monologues and animated the words of the script to provide visual emphasis. It’s a simple idea, but tricky to execute, and when done well, it’s a powerful method for delivering a marketing message. It’s a technique that will access both the verbal and visual memory centers of your audience’s brains and create the brand recognition that is the goal of every marketing initiative.

Kinetic Typography penetrates the consciousness because the dynamically presented spoken and written words act as mnemonic devices reinforcing each other. Don’t be fooled into thinking that the visuals alone will make up for any deficit in the script. Your words create a language framework that defines your brand; it creates the context within which you can communicate with your audience; and it allows you to take ownership of those words thereby limiting your competitions’ ability to feed off your marketing efforts. In short, words have meaning, words can move you, move you to action, and isn’t that what marketing is all about?

Having several years in sales, it has been taught for awhile now that if you show something that supports and matches what you are saying the listener has a far greater chance of retention. This concept is nothing new, just better technology to implement the concept.

VERY GOOD ARTICLE. I think you are right. I have invented an amazing device that would make vehicles much more efficient & safer. I hope to be able soon to afford to make my amazing invention & install it in a vehicle & prove what it will do-what you would think could not be done-& put on DVD how I did it. I would have it available for a suggested donation to our ministry of at least $14.00. I would show on my website what it would do-you would not believe it otherwise.

Videos with words can be easily understood without the fuss of implied meanings. A great video with a creative punch of words plus it’s unique style or story will make it go viral and be successful for a business.